Making the Uneasy Transition From Prisoner to Celebrity

GAZA CITY — Freshly barbered and wearing a shirt so new its creases still showed, Mohammed Musa Taqatqa arrived at the ceremony with his sister, greeted by countless handshakes while having to duck slightly as he stepped beneath the five plastic bouquets on the wedding-style arch.

Accepting a garland of white flowers, he draped it over the two scarves already tied neatly around his neck and walked to one of the seats in the large auditorium marked with the single Arabic word “Moharar,” meaning “Freed.”

There, Mr. Taqatqa sat down alongside hundreds of his fellow guests of honor — all similarly bedecked in scarves and flowers. Despite the nuptial trappings, though, this was not a wedding. It was a welcome ceremony at the Islamic University of Gaza for hundreds of the Palestinian prisoners released last week in an Israeli-Palestinian prisoner exchange deal.

Mr. Taqatqa, 38, was among the first group of 477 Palestinian prisoners freed in return for an Israeli tank soldier, Sgt. First Class Gilad Shalit, captured five years ago when Hamas militants crossed through a tunnel to raid an Israeli military base. Mr. Taqatqa had served 18 years of a life sentence in an Israeli prison, with a lot of time spent in solitary.

While Sergeant Shalit has remained largely out of public view, Mr. Taqatqa and many of the other freed Palestinian prisoners are living in the full glare of near constant publicity. The transition and unceasing attention have made Mr. Taqatqa a bit uneasy as he tries to learn to deal not only with freedom but also with the unfamiliar trappings of modern life, like cellphones and laptop computers.

“He still feels that he is in prison; he does not believe that he is out,” a sister, Zeinab, said during one evening visit to a family friend’s house. She has come to Gaza to help him find a wife.

Mr. Taqatqa is a native of Bethlehem in the West Bank, but as a condition of release, he was forced to live in the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip. “The first thing I think of now is to finish my studies,” Mr. Taqatqa said as he tried to focus on his new life.

But the university reception here was the first public engagement of Day 6 of freedom for Mr. Taqatqa, and each day is strikingly similar. In the morning or afternoon, numbered buses line up outside the five-star hotel where he and the other prisoners have been staying. They are taken to a meeting with senior Hamas officials, or to a public rally, all organized by Hamas to showcase the prisoners and Hamas’s part in gaining their freedom. Then back on the bus and to the hotel before the next reception.

Mr. Taqatqa had been sentenced for murder by terror operation, military training, attempted murder and membership in an unregistered organization. He admits to having been a member of Hamas’s military wing and to having shot at Israelis. But he seems distinctly uncomfortable with being a paraded around after spending nearly half his life in an Israeli jail. He says he now wants to pursue a new path.

“I think that the previous stage is over for me; we are now entering a new stage, and for sure it will be different,” he said over a cappuccino in his hotel restaurant. “I was young, and the way I looked at things was different. This does not mean that I am not part of this struggle anymore. I am part of the reality of Gaza, but my view of the struggle will be from a different angle, without any doubt, and not similar to the one when I entered prison.”

He is among 60 former prisoners living at Gaza’s newest hotel, Al Mashtal, which looks out over the Mediterranean seafront. Featuring marble floors, palm trees and a swimming pool, it would not look out of place anywhere along the Mediterranean and usually charges $140 a night. Hamas is paying $110,000 per month to house the prisoners until they find homes.

For the coming weeks the hotel will be the base for Mr. Taqatqa’s new life — snatching a few hours of private time in between public and family engagements to learn how to adjust to the 21st century.

Already Mr. Taqatqa has realized that the Internet is his gateway to the outside world, particularly to his family in Bethlehem. His sister Zeinab also doubles as a computer and cellphone instructor. In the lobby she huddles over his new Dell laptop, showing him how to avoid making it crash again by opening too many windows at the same time.

“He spends all night on the Internet to try and understand all about it,” she said, adding she is concerned for him and eager to provide stability. “I want him to find a flat, and get married. That’s all. This is my project.”

As he sits on the floor surrounded by friends, eating fish and chicken, enjoying the unfamiliar presence of children and drinking Proud cola, Mr. Taqatqa looks far more comfortable than in the larger gatherings. After so long in prison, he says he now dislikes fixed appointments, and was startled at the sheer number of Gazans who have turned out to greet the former prisoners. Although some others are already well on the way to marriage, he chafes at being pressured into anything.

“I might find it hard to cope with a relationship right now,” he said, “and a partner might find it difficult with me. It is too fast.”

In Gaza, especially, the old life of the Hamas fighter is never far away, dangerous, seductively lawless, hanging out on dark street corners in pickup trucks with swivel-mounted heavy machine guns and girls veiled and segregated, looking on.

In the Israeli newspaper Yediot Aharonot, one commentator, Nahum Barnea, wrote about “the cost of the deal, about the number of terrorists who are being put back into the field.” Yet he concluded that despite the price, “the deal was justified” to bring back Sergeant Shalit.

For his part, Mr. Taqatqa says he knows what Israelis think of him, and laments the frozen view that each side has of the other.

“The way both sides look at each other will be hard to change,” he said. “They look at us as terrorists, and it is impossible for them to look at us in a different way.”

“I hate the occupier and hate what he does to our nation,” he added. “If this struggle is over, we could live as neighbors.”

A version of this article appears in print on October 28, 2011, on page A8 of the New York edition with the headline: Making the Uneasy Transition From Prisoner to Celebrity. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe